David Kinch

When the reader examines these lines, let him please imagine the author, sitting at the bar of the Copacabana Palace in Rio together with David Kinch, a straw hat hanging obliquely on his forehead. From Los Gatos to the end of the world, Kinch is, of all the Americans of whom Henry James wrote, the one that has most pushed love education far away from the doorstep.

Of his legendary love for Europe there’s obviously a mark in his reverence for travel and for the grounding on himself. We’ve never seen David happier than when he offered to show a custom-cut apple farm, a few squeals of tires away from his restaurant in California and surrounded by the hills where the Grateful Dead lived in a community (close by there was also Steve Jobs and those of Apple). It’s a hectare or so of nature awakening, an orchard of biodynamic miracles from which, thanks to the dedication of his collaborator Cynthia Sandberg, the stimuli of his vegetal universe arrive every day.

Between Santa Cruz, where he surfs on the crest of his Point Break to San Francisco Bay, a cultural seaport, David Kinch’s Manresa is the meeting point of a humanistic syncretism, of compelling or hinted-at flavours. Here every dish tells the story of a journey, of sunny meetings or epiphanies in the shades of the Rising Sun. At Manresa, you could perhaps meet Adrià, passing by. You could run into Ben Shewry, Mauro Colagreco, Renè Redzepi, Dan Hunteror Alexandre Gauthier, all people who shared his adventures and to whom Kinch opened the doors of his restaurant before all the food festivals, scattered around Planet Cuisine, did. On the outskirts of the empire, on the road towards the great South, true coherence happens, for Manresa, when thoughts follow the beat of the heart. It’s the most beautiful American-style happy end in a broad sense – and also the most innate.

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Identità Milano

After graduating in Miami in 1981, and having studied in France (with Marc Meneau), Spain (Pedro Subijana), Germany, Japan (Fukuoka) and in the United States, in 2002 he opens Manresa in Los Gatos, two Michelin stars for 6 years in a row. He has received the Best Chef in America award for the Pacific region from the James Beard Foundation